W11 Upgrade on Z420 Z620... easy

[SDH]

"Way-old" Dell E6410 laptop now working on W11 22H2 first try with this upgrade pathway. A bit more to test with tomorrow.

I have to say... Microsoft has an excellent upgrade here but I do understand that I'm working with mainsteam older but good hardware. If just 1% of 1 billion upgrades went bad I'd not want to deal with that. But we're happy with what we have today... 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Scott:

That is encouraging news.

I will definitely save the dc7800 CMT and 8000 Elite CMT to be tested for an in-place upgrade by using your approach.

I don't use either PC, so I am in no rush to upgrade them by doing a clean install.

[SDH]

Great Paul, thanks.

I'll post the HowTo later today. You basically make a USB3 thumb drive (8GB size is more than enough) and copy over a folder containing all the installer components from a correct-language MS iso for W11 22H2. That has a single .dll replaced with a slightly larger one. Plus, a batch file to launch before you launch the iso's setup.exe file.

That "kit" can be taken on the thumb drive to any computer, with contents copied over to the desktop and the whole process is run from there... thumb drive is out... you don't boot from it or the installer components. It is actually quite fast if you have a fast computer. The selected .iso needs to be of the same language type as is on the computer to be upgraded... for most of us that will be English 64 bit rather than English International 64 bit. There is a way to check what is on the computer...

Those two together give you the "hybrid" effect I spoke of earlier. By themselves neither worked reliably for me.

I've done 3 more here at home again with easy success on all, and then I run Windows Update and get the available W11 22H2 updates. I'll be able to also try it on a Z620 with SSD cloned from a W10Pro64 image to see if it can do the W10-W11 22H2 full upgrade directly. So far all these other ones have had the W11 21H2 upgrade from W10 already done using Dong's method.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Excellent!

Looking forward to trying your new method out.

[SDH]

EDIT: I'll be adding some images and a few comments to this page to help clarify the upgrade process.

There are a number of workarounds that have variable success with upgrading to the most recent release of W11, a major update, 22H2. I tried some of the variants and had little success. I came up with the idea of using a hybrid approach when I realized that one method involved a small modification to a single .dll file used in the W11 22H2 install package, and another major "batch file" process that appears to modify multiple parts of the install/upgrade by being loaded into memory for use during the process. This has worked in all my upgrades now over the past 1.5 days, of about 12 HP and Dell workstations and laptops. A single issue arose in a Z440 where the process went all the way to completion and then was rolled back automatically related to presence of a boot Z Turbo Drive. Here's the details:

1. Obtain that one small .dll file for use... the modified one has the same name and is 192.KB in size while the original in the Microsoft installer is 178 KB. The foundation post can be read HERE , Jensd also has a YouTube video that is easily found, but the .dll by itself is available directly HERE . That is really all you'll need for use in my hybrid method. Have it available to copy/paste into the Microsoft installer.

2. You also want a copy of the correct language .iso for the W11 22H2 installer. That can be downloaded directly from Microsoft. Use the third of three options... the bottom one... the download of a single .iso that is about 5GB in size. The one most of us would usually use is English 64 bit. There are multiple added language versions and you're supposed to download the same language version as your current install is using. Supposedly there is a way to tell exactly what you have but I've not looked into that because we only use the one I mention above (not the International English 64 bit one). What you download to your workstation can be "mounted" by double clicking on it and you can go into My Computer and see that this results in creation of a virtual DVD with all the files/folders inside that. You simply copy all of those and paste them into a folder on your desktop to convert them from virtual to real. Name that folder W11 22H2 Mod. However, it has not been modded yet...

3. Do the mod to this installer by copying the192 KB appraiserres.dll file you downloaded from Jensd and pasting it into the "sources" folder inside the Microsoft W11 22H2 Mod folder you have on your desktop. The original is a bit smaller at 178KB and you just replace that one with the new one. Now your installer is ready to go.

4. The other part of the hybrid method is to download a complex batch file from the github AveYo developer that has been retooled to work with W11 22H2. The PDF below shows you exactly what to do... read that first. If you don't read that you'll probably do this process wrong. The address to download the compressed batch file application from is via GitHub - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat: Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions fr... 

Microsoft has changed some things in the upgrade process and this cooperative project has been figuring out how to get this major revision of W11 to work on officially unsupported hardware. The most recent code revisions were released 10/2/22. The PDF attached below is a small portion of a web article that also gives you the link to download the tool and shows where in the unzipped tool's folder you want to navigate to and what you want to double click to launch the correct batch file.

So, download that zipped folder, extract it onto your desktop. Uncheck the box before unzipping that so that will result in an uncompressed folder on your desktop named "MediaCreationTool.bat-main". Inside that folder is a folder named "bypass 11". Inside the bypass 11 folder is a cmd file that is named "Skip_TPM_Check_on_Dynamic_Update.cmd". That is the only one you'll double click on just before you fire off the W11 22H2 install process.

Run that as administrator as shown in the 3 page PDF attached below. Things move fast at that moment... you only have about 8 seconds to tap any key on your keyboard, and then things just seem to disappear. However, that CMD run has loaded some complex code into memory so it is ready to act in concert with your W11 22H2 Mod installer in the next step... that is when you get the benefit of both of the hybrid parts working together.

There are two end results you can see when you run that... you can toggle back and forth between these and obviously you want the green "INSTALLED" condition rather than the purple "REMOVED" condition right before you launch the modified Microsoft installer that you've also got handy on your desktop. Pressing any key on your keyboard will lock that condition into place, and it probably is a good idea to try this out a few times because this step moves pretty fast.

Here's what those two look like:

5. Now go straight from step 4 into your W11 22H2 Mod folder on your desktop and find the "Setup" executable ("Setup.exe" if your File Explorer Options view tab in Control Panel is set to show extensions of known file type). Single right-click on Setup and drag down to Run as administrator. This will fire off the install process and should allow you to upgrade from W10 or W11 21H2 to W11 22H2. That is what I have been testing it with.

I've chosen only the top upgrade option rather than the lower two options as the process proceeds. I can now confirm that this method will also take a W10 install directly up to W11 22H2.

One of the first windows in the install process allows you to turn off automatic checks for updates this way. It is important to turn that off... you've already checked for updates just before starting the process, and you don't want that going on at this time. Also, if the option to help by letting Microsoft see what you are doing is checked do un-tic that box.

Now some important tips:

1. I always do a thorough tune-up of the original install I'll be working with. It is best to fully update its OS install and also your Microsoft Store install. You don't want unexpected updates going on while you're doing this. For the same reason when the install begins virtually at the first main page there is an option to change the way windows updates... click on that and choose the option of "Not right now".

2. Once you have created your W11 22H2 Mod folder and your MediaCreationTool.bat-main folder you can copy those two over onto a thumb drive and use that to transport those over to the desktop of whatever computer/workstation you want to upgrade. I recommend using a quality USB3 thumb drive in a USB3 port for the transfer speed, and I only use the thumb drive to transfer those two folders over to the desktop of the target workstation.

I don't recommend running this process from the thumb drive. Pull the thumb drive out right after you do the transfer so it does not accidentally interfere during the several automatic reboots that will happen during the upgrade process. I recommend you format the thumb drive NTFS, and in its properties make sure to uncheck the option to allow indexing. of the thumb drive.

3. When the upgrade is done there now will be W11 22H2 updates available via Windows Update. Don't rush things. Some may happen automatically. If your system seems unresponsive at this time it likely is due to an ongoing download/install of update behind the scenes. KEY: In W11 on the Windows Update page in your OS there is now an "Advanced" section down a bit, and in there can be optional updates that you may wish to have but would not know of unless you looked.

These have cleared some exclamations in Device Manager for me, and in our HP ZX40 workstations that list is quite long.

4. When all is upgraded and updated and settled in I do a deep clean. Disk Cleanup in W11 is no longer reached via the Properties of your C drive entry inside the equivalent of My Computer. You need to use Search to find Disk Cleanup. I do both types of Disk Cleanup, checking all boxes for both types...For the second type you need to click OK twice. Read up on that. That may take some time, and I choose to delete the old OS files too. Then I go up to the Tools tab and check for disk errors.... that goes fast. Then optimize all partitions from the Tools tab. Finally I run this from an elevated CMD launch (run CMD as administrator):

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
sfc /scannow

Those two will auto-roll from one to the next if you add a few returns at the end of scannow. Make sure to include those invisible returns when you copy/right-click paste up anywhere in the black of the CMD box. Running the two together in sequence this way is quite handy.

5. EDIT: When you run the updater it may state that it is doing a "Windows Server" upgrade... it actually is doing the W11 22H2 upgrade. I'm guessing that the same would be true if you were doing this same upgrade method on an officially supported more recent workstation also.

6. See my post in this thread below regarding upgrades that get almost done and then "roll back" to the original install. That is what happened to Paul, below, and likely is due to a bad/missing device driver. So, another thing to do before launching the process is to check inside your Device Manager for any missing drivers on your original install and fix those before you proceed.

Check out the attached PDF below...

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Scott:

Thanks for the great write-up and associated links.

I liked this method better since you make a modified installation media file.

Unfortunately, it did not work for either the 8000 Elite or dc7800.

It failed the same way on both.

Worked perfectly out of the gate and after some time, it just returned to the Windows desktop.

So, I guess I will have to clean install W11 22H2 on those when I am bored on a cold and snowy day, and have nothing better to do.

Paul

[SDH]

Paul,

Thanks for that update... I now also have seen a couple of the cases where the W11 22H2 install progresses almost to the end and then rolls back to what I started with. Both of those have been with two Z440s I have here. One was a W10 to W22H2 upgrade that I just figured out and fixed. So, that shows it is possible to use exactly this technique to upgrade directly from W10 to W11 22H2.

Here's the details. The one I have not worked on yet has a boot Z Turbo Drive G2, running a NVMe M.2 stick as its SSD. I'll report back on that later. This one I just fixed has a regular 2.5" form factor Intel 545s SSD. Reading some from Microsoft indicated that the roll back experienced is usually from a driver issue... missing/corrupt/old/incorrect all can cause the same end result of the roll back. I went looking in Device Manager and found a missing driver in this Z440 that has not been missing before. I've been setting BIOS back to factory defaults before doing the upgrades. It turns out that the defaults in the past was that the Embedded Security Device (the TPM chip) was set to Disabled, but the latest Z440 BIOS upgrade had changed that to Enabled. That is why it was only now showing up in Device Manager.

Starting with the ZX40 family of workstations BIOS got significantly more complex. In prior workstations things were pretty much the same overall. For example if you navigated into BIOS/ Security tab/ Device Security section/ all the devices would be listed and the default had been all were enabled except Embedded Security Device... that was in older workstations and that is why people could not find their TPM when they looked in the past.

With this major change to HP workstation BIOS it is more complex to find that but it is in there and you just go find it and change it from Enable to Disable, and save the changes on the way out of BIOS. Then when you go to Device Manager that missing driver is no longer present. Disabling a device that way makes it invisible to the OS and to an updater and even to other parts of BIOS.

EDIT: The navigation to this BIOS setting in ZX40 workstations and above is: Get into BIOS/ shift over to the Security tab/ go down to the top Administrator Tools section/ in there you'll see TPM Embedded Security/ go to TPM Device/ change that to Hidden/ shift back over to the Main tab/ go down to Save Changes and Exit/ Yes/ you'll now see a warning related to "TPM PPI" and press F1 to accept.    Now when you boot again you'll see in Device Manager that the missing driver "exclamation" has resolved.

End of story... I then was able to re-try the W11 22H2 upgrade and it worked perfectly... no roll back. I think this may help others trying this on the ZX40 and I know some of the Business Class HP PCs use this newer type of BIOS too. As do the later Z series workstations....

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Scott:

Glad that worked for you.

All of my HP business desktops had the TPM 1.2 security devices enabled and present in the device manager before doing the update.  BIOS' updated to the latest versions.

No missing drivers and all drivers updated to the latest versions available.

Needless to say, the dc7800 and 8000 Elite only have W7 drivers, but they were installed, and do work fine on W11 21H2.

It is inexplicable to me why my 8200 Elites updated to 22H2 and the older models didnt.

I will say that neither the dc7800 or 8000 Elite models have a UEFI BIOS, so I can only install W11 in legacy mode.

I don't know if that was a problem, but one of my 8200 Elites also has W11 installed in Legacy mode, so it may not be.

However, I am almost certain that I will be able to clean install W11 22H2 with no problem when I get around to it.

[SDH]

I've updated the HowTo above a bit with some images and can also update that the one Z440 which is running a Z Turbo Drive G2 (NVMe M.2 stick) boot drive still rolled its W11 22H2 install back at the very end of the process even after I took care of that missing TPM 1.2 driver by disabling TPM in BIOS as described above. This points to something related to the ZTD given that the two Z440s are otherwise identical.

I'll keep working on that single failure to upgrade to W11 22H2 out of the 14 Dell and HP workstations and laptops I've worked with here.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Scott:

I have some good news regarding a HP Elitebook 6930p I had previously used the batch file bypass process I gave you earlier.

When I ran the file to bypass the requirements, W11 checked the PC and reported it cannot run W11.

That was the first PC I ever got that error message with, so I just packed it up and forgot about it until today.

I used your method today and not only did it not report any issues, I also was able to upgrade the notebook from 21H2 to 22H2 with no problem.